Woburn, MA – December 20, 2022 — According to a Kaspersky survey, the majority of employees in North America are not ready to provide robots with full autonomy. The research on the consequences of automation and increased use of robotics and other AI based machines found most don’t believe production processes run by robots can be recovered immediately in case of a cyberattack or malfunction, with 76% believing full recovery will take a few days or longer.
Cybercriminals can harm business via emails, virtual spaces, endpoints and embedded system, and they are constantly searching for the new ways to attack. Companies should bear this in mind when implementing new technologies such as robotics into their business processes. On the one hand, they increase the production efficiency, but on the other, they raise serious cybersecurity concerns regarding their safety and reliability. On this basis, Kaspersky conducted a survey to gather opinions on robots in the workplace from people working in specific industries and to understand if there are any challenges or security issues that arise when it introducing robots in the workplace.[1]
According to the findings, most employees in North American companies with functioning production robots are aware of possible cybersecurity risks. Only 16% of them believe disabled robots can be fixed immediately in case of a cyberattack. Half (50%) expect that recovery operations would take a few weeks or longer, and more the optimistic respondents (26%) are of the opinion that a return to normal production processes could happen within a few days.
Another important finding of the survey shows people are concerned about the lack of control and regulations by third parties when it comes to robots and their autonomy.
Keeping in mind risks that rapid robotization may cause, more than half (58%) of respondents say that it’s unclear who takes ultimate responsibility if robots fail during an equipment malfunction or a cyberattack. This is one of the reasons why employees want to keep leadership positions for people. The majority of respondents (53%) believe that robots can increase production efficiency but only with human oversight. A third of employees (32%) are ready to trust the management of any production process completely to an AI robot.
“In this study we asked respondents to assess not only the level of companies’ robotization but also their ability to resist related cyber risks. It turned out that many employees had mixed feelings when assessing how protected robots are,” said Andrey Suvorov, head of KasperskyOS Business Unit. “They are confident that it’s necessary to pay more attention to their security and skeptical about how quickly a robot can recover after a cyber incident. In fact, we face the concerns about the modern industrial IoT systems proper work and protection, with all the variety of complicated smart devices inside. That’s why we offer Cyber Immune solutions to protect specific enterprise units or the entire IT-system, making industrial robots, ICS machines or autonomous vehicles immune to most cyberattacks without using applied security tools.”
To keep your industrial computer systems protected from various threats, Kaspersky experts recommend:
- Conducting regular security assessments of OT systems to identify and eliminate possible cyber security issues.
- Establishing continuous vulnerability assessment and triage as a basement for effective vulnerability management process. Dedicated solutions like Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity may become an efficient assistant and a source of unique actionable information, not fully available in public.
- Performing timely updates of key components to the company’s OT network; applying security fixes and patches or implementing measures to compensate as soon as it is technically possible. This is crucial to preventing a major incident that might cost millions due to the disruptions to the production process.
- Using Industrial EDR solutions such as Kaspersky Industrial Cybersecurity for Nodes with EDR for timely detection of sophisticated threats, investigation, and effective remediation of incidents.
- Enhance your response to new and advanced malicious techniques by developing and strengthening the incident prevention, detection, and response skills of your teams. Dedicated OT security training for IT security teams and OT personnel is one of the key measures to help to achieve this goal.
The full report with more insights on the consequences of automation and increased use of robots is available via the link.
About Kaspersky
Kaspersky is a global cybersecurity company founded in 1997. Kaspersky’s deep threat intelligence and security expertise is constantly transforming into innovative security solutions and services to protect businesses, critical infrastructure, governments and consumers around the globe. The company’s comprehensive security portfolio includes leading endpoint protection and a number of specialized security solutions and services to fight sophisticated and evolving digital threats. Over 400 million users are protected by Kaspersky technologies and we help 240,000 corporate clients protect what matters most to them. Learn more at usa.kaspersky.com.
Media Contact:
Cassandra Faro
Cassandra.Faro@Kaspersky.com
781-503-1812
[1] The survey was conducted across 15 countries: USA, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkey.
